think I just accidentally fed into the narrative that mental illness and its consequences can be overcome by a can-do attitude.
fuck.

for the record: no, it can’t.
which is why I haven’t been able to write a word since the other night.

I was high on (legal, prescribed) opioids when I coughed up that prologue, which I do believe were made more potent because a) like an idiot, I took them on an empty stomach, and b) the relief from not being in physical pain doubtlessly caused either a dopamine or oxytocin rush. (or both, not sure.)

Drugs do not make you creative, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar — drugs remove whatever barriers are in the way to let that creativity flow. in my case, it was physical pain and possibly slight stress.

My creativity is innate.
I have no doubt about my skill or my ideas or my ability.
I know I’m good. I’m not the best, but that’s fine — I think room to improve keeps things from getting boring.

when depression is pressing down on me so hard that I find it hard to move, let alone type up those ideas using my ability and learned skills, that’s not self-paralysis. it’s just garden variety paralysis.

there is no ‘self’ involved in this, which is what makes it so fucking frustrating. there’s no self in depression. that’s the whole crux of the vile little matter — the self is dissolved with the acid of mental illness. I didn’t ask or tell my brain to start making that acid, it’s just the way I was fucking born.

a pianist can’t possibly be blamed for finding it close to impossible to play the piano if a psycho with a knife breaks through their window and cuts their hands off at the wrist.

I didn’t ask for a psycho with a knife to break into my brain, but here we are.

I hate writing at the moment, because depression makes it painful. I hate everything at the moment, for the same reason, and I wish to god I didn’t. but I have no say in it because depression is a psycho with a knife that breaks through your mental windows and cuts your soul off.

I’ve done a lot of shit to myself, but this? this I did not.

but hey. it’s a lot easier to play into the smiley, happy, “I made it, so can you!” toxic positivity bullshit than it is to say to people “I want to die all the time because I am so sad”. I’m lying, but hey. lots of other people are, too.

maybe I’ll just continue lying about the wordcount and productivity until I no longer have to. it’s not like anyone’s gonna read what I write, anyway. this is the TikTok world where people literally whine about books having too many words on a page. there was no hope for someone like me to begin with.